Carnaval-Day 1

If you know what Mardi Gras is, then you have an idea of what Carnaval is. Carnaval is the Brasilian version of Mardi Gras- only on steroids. It basically consists of lots of nudity, alcohol and sex.

A lot of missionaries/missionary teams typically get out of their cities and do some kind of retreat with other Christians during this time. This church family actually did that for a couple of years. We went a little more than an hour outside of the city and had a retreat. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, we were very blessed by those retreats. But, as a team, we began to feel led to stay in the city and help people during this time instead of going somewhere for a retreat. We felt that we could have a far greater impact on this city if we helped someone in need during this time when almost everyone leaves the city. We wanted to be a light in the city when the darkness is so strong.

Last year we heard of a need to paint a day care center in the neighborhood of one of the families from our church. We took a group of about 20 people and spent 2 days together painting the inside of their building.

This year we had two groups. One group went to help a family of a young lady who had given her life to Christ, but had recently fallen away from the church. She is now expecting a baby and needed some work done to help prepare for this new arrival. Our teammates, the Morrows, took a group to work at her home.

The group that Benay and I headed up went to the apartment of Christian, Josemar, Anderson and Renato. The first three left the Christian based drug/alcohol rehab center about 3 months ago, and Renato left just last week and was invited to live with them.

They told us of their desire to have their apartment painted and to have kitchen cabinets so that could keep their dishes off the floor.

We had an incredible group that was happy to help.

This is the group as we got ready to leave our house.We got to their apartment a little after 10 in the morning and went right to work.

Some painted..... .....some installed cabinets............and some played with Jeanderson. (Garrett saw that Jeanderson had no toys in his house so he used his own money to buy him a soccer ball and he gave him some of his old toys as well) Benay's dad also spent most of the day with us painting doors and window trim.Renato even used his giftedness to fix the windows and radio in the old school van that Benay and I own. They have never worked properly since we bought the van over 2 years ago. They work perfectly now. After a few hours of work, Benay, Bronwyn, Ansley, Carys, Anderson, Leni, Auristela and Maurício arrived with lunch. It was a blessing for us as we were all hungry.

We were also blessed by our not-yet Christian friends (Freitas and Auristela) participating in the work. They own a hardware store in our neighborhood and sold everything to us for the work day at cost. Auristela also brought all the bread for our lunch sandwiches. It was encouraging to me to see them jump right in with a bunch of believers to help someone in need. We are praying that this will be the year that they sell out for Christ.

Later in the afternoon we broke up the work with music while we cleaned up from the busy day.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

We finished up around 6:00.

I got home around 6:45. I took a quick shower and at 7:45 Benay, her dad, Ansley and myself were out the door again.

Christian, Anderson, Rodrigo and Renato had asked us to worship with them at their church on Saturday night. So a little after 8:00 we arrived at the Immanuel Pentecostal Church to worship with our brothers.The day of blessings continued as we were able to spend more time with Jeanderson.
We were also able to hear a 14 year old boy, filled with the Spirit, speak to the church family.

The church also asked our brother Paulo Renato to speak to them. Paulo is one of the most humble men you will ever meet. He is an incredible part of our church family and he is also a recovering alcoholic who met the Lord at the recovery center. He blessed us with his testimony on Saturday night.

The worship time ended with Christian's girlfriend giving her life to Christ.

Later we heard Rodrigo (yellow shirt below) tell the pastor that he has two church families, one on Saturday night with them and one every Sunday morning in our house.

We feel very blessed to be involved in the lives of the men from the recovery center.

It was a incredible day.